Thirteen's The Charm
by RoseTintedShades
Summary: A recently ressurected Marauder contemplates her new life.


Her eyes open. The cloning fluid stings a bit. She remembers dying. Gambit brought down the building she was in. That traitor! So much for him not having the stomach for killing...

The Doctor follows the usual procedure. Less than two hours later she is free to enjoy her new life. She wonders how long it would last. It must be the thirteenth now... -If three wasn't the charm, maybe thirteen is. - As usual she started with trying to find out which of the other Marauders were at the base and which were still going through... the 'Process'.

On the way to the Marauders living quarters, she spent some time wandering around the corridors and looking for things that were different from the last time she woke up. The arched corridors were still stainless metal, illuminated by harsh and unforgiving light that seemed to come from everywhere at once. They were the same in every lab, you could never know if above you was the hot and unforgiving desert of Arizona or the bustling streets of New York. One of the Doctor's clone drones hurried past her. The pin on his right breast, a red diamond in a white circle, proclaimed him a lab assistant. She pitied the clone for his assignment. In the Doctor's domain, nobody lived as dangerously and saw as many grueling and disgusting scenes as his lab assistants. The clone drone turned around and quickly apologized even though he hadn't done anything except for... Well, existing. But with the Doctor, that was enough of a crime for termination, the Marauder mused.

She remembers having once walked into the Doctor's lab while he was performing an experiment. She had just wanted to find out where the horrific noise that had soaked the entire base came from. It sounded like someone was being skinned alive... After seeing what was going on on the exam table, she was sure that the subject would have preferred skinning. Suddenly the Doctor's cold stare ripped away from the gruesome scene and fixed on her.

"I have explicitly instructed all Marauders to stay away from my laboratory unless summoned. I do not tolerate disobedience." He said in that cold, emotionless voice of his.

She started rambling apologies but before she even finished the first 'sorry', he had already pointed his hand at her and fired one of his devastating energy blasts.

She died. That had probably been the fourth or fifth time, but it had been the first time the Doctor killed her. Sure, she had already seen him blasting Harpoon and Blockbuster, but she hadn't thought that it would ever happen to her. After all, she wasn't like those crazy cretins, was she? Later she found out that she was actually quite lucky to have only once died at the Doctors hands and all of her teammates, with the exception of Sabertooth and Malice, had already had done so more than once. -Although Sabertooth's case is up for debate,- she contemplates, -considering he probably dies more often than any other Marauder, he just recovers nearly instantly and without the Doctor's aid.-

She likes to believe that the Doctor was sorry for killing her. He may be an emotionless immortal scientist, but that doesn't mean he can't feel regret, does it? That time he cloned her with harder skin and faster reflexes, so that could be some kind of apology... She wonders why she even tries to fool herself. The Doctor sees everyone and everything as nothing but more or less useful DNA and, in case of his servants, skills. And the improvements are a standard procedure, just most of the time they're so small that usually nobody ever notices. He probably even changed something this time, maybe made her immune to some disease of his own creation or tweaked some detail in her brain.

Snapping back into the present, she watches the clone drone scurry away. Like all the Marauders, she hates thinking about the fact that she isn't the same person she was when she entered his service. She wonders whose lot is worse, the clones, who never knew anything but the labs, who lived their lives in a kind of monotone trance, or the Marauders, who remembered having once been free but will never be again, and will forever carry the faded taste of freedom on their tongue?


End file.
